9),

"the man carried nothing but the knife or hatchet
(machete) with which he clears his way among the
underwood; whilst the woman, bending under a great load
of plantains, carried one child in her arms, and,
sometimes, two other children placed upon the load."

Schomburgk (II., 428) found that Caribbean women generally bore marks
of the brutal treatment to which they were subjected by the men. Brett
noted (27, 31) that among the Guiana tribes women had to do all the
work in field and home as well as on the march, while the men made
baskets, or lay indolently in hammocks until necessity compelled them
to go hunting or fishing. The men had succeeded so thoroughly in
creating a sentiment among the women that it was their duty to do all
the work, that when Brett once induced an Indian to take a heavy bunch
of plantains off his wife's head and carry it himself, the wife (slave
to the backbone) seemed hurt at what she deemed a degradation of her
husband. One of the most advanced races of South America were the
Abipones of Paraguay. While addicted to infanticide they, contrary to
the rule, were more apt to spare the female children; but their reason
for this was purely commercial. A son, they said, would be obliged to
purchase a wife, whereas daughters may be sold to a bridegroom
(Dobrizhoffer, II., 97). The same missionary relates (214) that boys
are laughed at, praised and rewarded for throwing bones, horns, etc.,
at their mothers.

"If their wives displease them, it is sufficient; they
are ordered to decamp.... Should the husband cast his
eyes upon any handsome woman the old wife must move
merely on this account, her fading form and advancing
age being her only accusers, though she may be
universally commended for conjugal fidelity, regularity
of conduct, diligent obedience, and the children she
has borne."

In Chili, among the Mapuches (Araucanians) the females, says Smith
(214), "do all the labor, from ploughing and cooking to the saddling
and unsaddling of a horse; for the 'lord and master' does nothing but
eat, sleep, and ride about." Of the Peruvian Indians the Jesuit Pater
W. Bayer (cited Reich, 444) wrote about the middle of the eighteenth
century that wives are treated as slaves and are so accustomed to
being regularly whipped that when the husband leaves them alone they
fear he is paying attention to another woman and beg him to resume his
be